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Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change. If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away. I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

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Again, sorry for the lack of photos lately. Mrs. Prof got a letter from the city code enforcement thugs, demanding that something be trimmed to clear access to our back alley (but not specifying what). She's spent the past two weekends trimming everything in sight and weeding her flower beds while the temperatures have been below the triple-digit mark.

I'm still trying to convince her to set up a YouTube channel for the videos she took, but she complains about not knowing what to do every time I bring up the topic. I may have to use my own channel, since I'm the only one with semi-serious video editing software (VideoStudio Pro x9, soon to be x10). I'll keep you updated.

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I'm still trying to convince her to set up a YouTube channel for the videos she took, but she complains about not knowing what to do every time I bring up the topic. I may have to use my own channel, since I'm the only one with semi-serious video editing software (VideoStudio Pro x9, soon to be x10). I'll keep you updated.

Tell her if you put a low level if commercials on the channel, the proceeds could be used to support the kitties. You know how popular cat videos are on the internet!

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Mrs. Prof finally put the Trail Camera to its intended use last night. She was looking for cats at a property where a feeder who'd taken over from one who'd moved had said she'd never seen any cats, but the food was disappearing and the water was getting dirty—a sign of raccoons. She didn't find any raccoons, but she found a cat and some unidentified bird:

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Mrs. Prof put the trail camera out earlier this week at a suspected cat/wildlife spot. It didn't fire off a single picture. We're not sure why. It's possible that nothing came within trigger range, but that would be rare. She's going to check out the batteries and do a diagnostic on it (to the degree that she can).

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Tomorrow I'm going to try and put sort of a hybrid video up on YouTube. It starts out inside our house, then moves outside to show some of the ferals. All of it is shot with a phone camera, horizontal. It's not trail cam stuff, but with the ferals, it is nature-oriented. Mrs. Prof shot it with her phone.

I'm going to have to make sure I've got VideoStudio Ultimate 10 installed and configured properly before I post it, because I'm going to have to cross-fade two video clips to make it make sense. Cross your fingers and wish me luck (and health)!

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Those ferals seem fairly friendly too, unless that's just they are when they know they're about to get food.

They've grown to like Mrs. Prof, Great Deliverer of Food. Me, they could give a fart in the wind about. The long-haired orange tabby is a real mystery (the one who sneezed). He hisses at everyone at least once, usually, and then turns into Normal Cat.

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

The two orange tabbies seem to like each other.

They're just now getting friendly. All of them are friends. They're all in the TNR club. No hormones to get in the way of just being a cat.

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So, I have been having an issue with wild cats at my home lately, and thought that this would be the appropriate thread to ask for advice.

Basically, a semi-feral black cat in the neighborhood had kittens, and I managed to get homes for the kittens, keeping the runt of the litter (who is a female black longhair) to be my own pet. She is now four months old, and the issue is that Mama Cat is growing hostile towards her, hissing and batting at her, and stealing her food. What can I do to discourage Mama Cat beyond simply keeping the kitten indoors? Mama Cat is sufficiently wary of me that I am unable to get close enough to actually touch her, but is bold enough to come and harass her former baby whenever my back is turned for more than a minute.

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So, I have been having an issue with wild cats at my home lately, and thought that this would be the appropriate thread to ask for advice.

Basically, a semi-feral black cat in the neighborhood had kittens, and I managed to get homes for the kittens, keeping the runt of the litter (who is a female black longhair) to be my own pet. She is now four months old, and the issue is that Mama Cat is growing hostile towards her, hissing and batting at her, and stealing her food. What can I do to discourage Mama Cat beyond simply keeping the kitten indoors? Mama Cat is sufficiently wary of me that I am unable to get close enough to actually touch her, but is bold enough to come and harass her former baby whenever my back is turned for more than a minute.

First of all, both mama and baby need to be sterilized. Contact your local Trap-Neuter-Return program and talk to them about what to do. That'll get the hormones out of mama and stop her from seeing her offspring as competition. Second, if you have *really* been socializing the kitten, it's time to make a decision about whether or not you want to bring it inside and keep it as a pet.

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Mama definitely needs to be sterilized, though the vet says I should wait on Baby till she is at least six months old. Right now Baby weighs just under a pound, so she's a bit small for non-vital surgery.

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Mama definitely needs to be sterilized, though the vet says I should wait on Baby till she is at least six months old. Right now Baby weighs just under a pound, so she's a bit small for non-vital surgery.

Your vet is being conservative. Here's an excerpt from a post by the ASPCA:

Quote

When to Spay or Neuter Your Pet

... (about dogs)

For cats: It is generally considered safe for kittens as young as eight weeks old to be spayed or neutered. In animal shelters, surgery is often performed at this time so that kittens can be sterilized prior to adoption. In an effort to avoid the start of urine spraying and eliminate the chance for pregnancy, it’s advisable to schedule the surgery before your own cat reaches five months of age. It’s possible to spay a female cat while she’s in heat.

Talk to your veterinarian to determine the best time to spay or neuter your pet.

Take the ASPCA as a rather reliable source. I've also heard two pounds as a minimum. Let me check when Mrs. Prof wakes up. I'll get back to you with the Garland T-N-R guidelines.

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Okay, I can see how the ASPCA has different priorities, because they've seen too many pet adopted from shelters not get fixed, even if there's a deposit waiting for the owner when they do. Likewise TNR who can't count on being able to catch a give cat again.

As far as the individual cat, when they have an owner who is definitely going to fix them and it's just a question of when, I believe the optimal time is six months old. The reason is their teeth. Puppies and kittens start losing their baby teeth at about four months old, and are finished by six months old, Sometimes, one or more baby teeth will fail to come out and get out of the way of the adult one, so you wind up with the adult tooth jammed up against the baby one, unable to move into its proper position, which can be painful as well as being likely to trap food and hair and lead to dental disease and infections. If we fix them at six months, we can also take a good look at their teeth, and pull any baby teeth that clearly aren't going to get out of the way; the adult teeth are still finishing erupting, so the can shift into the gap and end up where they should be once the baby tooth is out of the way.

For girl dogs, if they are spayed before their first heat cycle, they get over 90% protection from breast cancer for the rest of their lives, which is a huge benefit. Dogs in general, they found that the legs grow longer and the angles in their knees are different if they're fixed at 2 months than if they wait until a year old; since then they've found that the effect is present with fixing them at six months, too. The longer legs are more prone to getting a torn cruciate ligament, a fairly common injury in active dogs. Now, the girl dogs getting that protection from breast cancer is still a much more important benefit to their overall health, so I still recommend spaying dogs at six months old. Boy dogs, on the other hand, don't have a deadline. Their hormones change more gradually. So, iff they have a responsible owner who won't let them roam and won't let them near an unspayed girl dog, then it's better to wait until they're a year old if you can.

Cats also get some protection from breast cancer, but it's not nearly as common in cats as it is in dogs, so it took longer to see any effect. No one has found any significant health differences between different ages of fixing them, although I admit that may just be because the studies haven't been done yet. It's pretty rare to see a cat tear their cruciate, and they often don't need surgery even if they do. So, the only major factors for cats are the teeth, and how certain you are that they will get fixed later if they aren't done while you've got the chance.

On 9/22/2017 at 0:38 AM, ijuin said:

What can I do to discourage Mama Cat beyond simply keeping the kitten indoors?

Why do you need anything beyond that? If you really want to call this cat "yours" then you can't just leave her outside. If she's outside, then she's just a stray you happen to feed. Anyone who finds her and takes her in will legally own her, because you don't. If she's still outside, then you didn't decide to keep her, you just decided not to find her a home like you did the others. Please, either give her a good home, or take her to someone who will find her one!

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Your vet is being conservative. Here's an excerpt from a post by the ASPCA:

Take the ASPCA as a rather reliable source. I've also heard two pounds as a minimum. Let me check when Mrs. Prof wakes up. I'll get back to you with the Garland T-N-R guidelines.

Ah, well, Baby Cat weighed in at exactly one pound last week at the vet, so it's still a few weeks early.

On 9/23/2017 at 9:19 AM, CritterKeeper said:

Why do you need anything beyond that? If you really want to call this cat "yours" then you can't just leave her outside. If she's outside, then she's just a stray you happen to feed. Anyone who finds her and takes her in will legally own her, because you don't. If she's still outside, then you didn't decide to keep her, you just decided not to find her a home like you did the others. Please, either give her a good home, or take her to someone who will find her one!

Well, what I really meant was, what can I do to stop Mama Cat from attacking Baby Cat other than keeping the two of them from ever meeting again?

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Take the ASPCA as a rather reliable source. I've also heard two pounds as a minimum. Let me check when Mrs. Prof wakes up. I'll get back to you with the Garland T-N-R guidelines.

I must be so tired still. I was staring at that ASPCA and for some reason I got 'Animal Society of Creative Anachronisms' from it -- I have no idea where the P went in my befogged mind. And now I am wondering what the ASCA is and what it does. Maybe it is the place where T. rexes, velociraptors, sabre-toothed tigers, mammoths and similar extinct animals go hold support meetings, between participating in movies where they trample, squish and eat very stupid humans.

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Well, what I really meant was, what can I do to stop Mama Cat from attacking Baby Cat other than keeping the two of them from ever meeting again?

The spay/neuter process will do it. Once the hormones are gone, the competition reflex will stop and they'll stop fighting. However, I still believe it's safer to keep the kitten inside, especially with fall here and winter approaching.